el & c baillieu , page-24

Exactly as masterfoods said.

Fraccing has been used for decades, and in Australia for over 40 years, whereas the unconventional gas industry is only about 10 years old. Clearly a lot of conventional wells were fracced!

My 'source' is that I am a geologist working in the Australian gas industry. There are dozens of conventional wells I'm aware of dating back to the 80s which were fracced, including wells in the Amadeus Basin, the Cooper Basin and the Denison Trough. I'd be willing to bet it's been done in the Perth, Surat, and onshore Victorian basins too. It's a standard practice to increase the initial flow rate in conventional wells, which increases the NPV, because it means you get the gas out quicker.

Let's look at your quote again, with emphasis on the key words:

While conventional gas resources can be developed and produced without any special well completions, most unconventional gas production requires the rock to be fractured (‘fracked’) or stimulated to allow natural gas to escape from the tight rock and flow to the surface.

In other words - conventional CAN (but is not always) produced without fraccing, and MOST (but not all) unconventional gas requires unconventional drilling.

The Queensland CSG fields are a prime example of unconventional gas that does not need fraccing. The sweet spots like Talinga have permeabilities of hundreds of millidarcies, which is extremely high. Not only do they not need fraccing, you couldn't frac them if you tried because you couldn't build up enough pressure.

So the difference between conventional and unconventional is clearly NOT fraccing. You can frac a conventional well and you don't always need to frac unconventional wells. In fact most unconventional wells in Qld aren't fracced at all.

They are unconventional because of their geological setting (not relying on migration or trap), not because they require fraccing (because most don't).

It's ironic that by your logic, 90% of CSG is actually conventional gas, not unconventional. Be sure to stop off at the Northern Rivers protestors and tell them they can all go home since CSG is conventional gas. I'm sure they will all be thrilled to hear it.